Indian Summer

 It is now early September.  In my part of the world (Pacific Northwest), the mornings are cool, almost to the point of frost.  Thin wisps of fog filter through the trees and a heavy blanket of dew coats the browned grasses and leaves.  Innumerable webs full of FAT spiders are etched in dewdrops against a gray sky.  By midday, the fog will clear:  intensely deep blue skies and a warm sun make it necessary to shuck the jackets, switch over to shorts and bask in the last days of the season.

     This is Indian summer.  In this time the green grasses of July have turned golden, their seed heads desiccated and their tiny seeds dispersed to the winds.  The leaves of early emerging spring willows are now bronze-colored and getting ready to drop. There was a heavy rain two weeks ago and now mushrooms are rising, fruiting from their mycelia underpinnings.  Last month chanterelles were scarce and expensive in the market:  $24 a pound!   But two weeks after that soaking rain, the mycelia throb and hum underground and produce an astonishing surge of life, in the form of mushrooms.  The price of chanterelles drops to $9 a pound.

   
This is a time of pulling together our stores, to prepare for the cold times ahead.  My sister Nancy gathered in her summer’s harvest of tomatoes.  She had the idea to stuff them into a cornucopia and take a picture. I saw the end result and knew immediately that she had captured the essence of Indian summer:  the woven basket full of the late summer fruits of the year, glowing like jewels in the slanting light of late summer.

   We are also canning peaches and freezing berries for jam.  Some years we go to the Farmer’s Market to buy pounds and pounds of cucumbers to make bread & butter pickles.  We harvest mushrooms out of our Garden Giant bed;  they get sautéed and then frozen to use in the winter months ahead.  Some years we buy a whole king salmon, fresh out of Puget Sound.  We fillet it, ice and freeze it and feed from its beautiful red flesh for months to come.

    From my world as a healer, this is also a time of gathering in our own personal reserves.  I go to bed a little earlier and rejoice in the relief of cool sheets, even needing a warmer blanket to get through the night  (I never thought I’d be cold again!) The night falls much more quickly and as I turn out the light to sleep, I feel the blessed darkness wrap me up in its own blanket of safety and care, lulling me deep into the dreamtime.

     In Five Element Chinese medicine, we look at how the seasons change, and how we as humans adjust to these changes.  Many of us have difficulty in resetting our internal clocks to these seasonal changes;  however in Chinese medicine they have come up with great ways to help us do this.
     They have a series of acupoints that are called the Horary Points.  There are 2 points for each season;  by accessing these points we can help ourselves make these seasonal adjustments.
     The points for Indian Summer are Stomach 36, followed by Spleen 3.  You can google diagram acupoint  followed by the name of the point and find a good photo and description of these points.  Once you have found them, you can apply acupressure in the form of your fingers, first holding Stomach 36 on both legs, then Spleen 3 on both feet.  Do this on a daily basis until you feel as if you have come back into alignment with nature’s rhythms.  If your region has daylight savings time, you will need to repeat this after the clock shifts.

     Soon the wheel of the year will turn again.  The cold mornings will turn to killing frost;  the leaves will drop and begin to mold.   In my land, the rains will begin and will not cease for weeks to come.  This is Fall.  All too soon it will be upon us.

    But for me, now in this place,  I am living in the beautiful days that come at the end of summer, reveling in fog and sun alike.  Until the season turns again…

Janet Partlow
Resources:  all photos by Nancy Partlow